Lucy Sussex

http://www.sussex.id.au

Lucy Sussex comes from Christchurch, New Zealand, and lectures at La Trobe University. She has edited four anthologies of short fiction. Her award-winning work includes five books for younger readers and the novel, The Scarlet Rider (1996). She has written the short story collections, My Lady Tongue (1988), A Tour Guide in Utopia (1995), and Absolute Uncertainty (2001). Currently she has a weekly review column in The Age. She has published Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction (2010) and an anthology of Victorian writing, Saltwater in the Ink (2010).

Lucy Sussex reviews 'Lusting for London: Australian Expatriate Writers at the Hub of Empire, 1870–1950' by Peter Morton

June 2012, no. 342 • 29 May 2012

Until recently, there was a prevailing attitude that to succeed as a professional author one had to go into exile. The small Australian market could not support a writing career; it was necessary to travel abroad and court a larger readership. Because Australia was a British colony, the obvious destination was London, heart of empire. ... (read more)

'Hazel Rowley: Biographer of big subjects' by Lucy Sussex

April 2011, no. 330 • 24 March 2011

To write about a biographer is to be aware of a presence, psychologically if not spectrally, sitting on your shoulder. This presence is not an angel, more like an imp, the minor demon that arouses bad deeds, or thoughts. In writing about a biographer we can feel not angelic inspiration, but the imp of doubt, saying: This is not good enough, I could do better. ... (read more)